Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 50 (MP3s)

(1) An absolute dazzler in the crown of South African jazz gems, this 1963 conflagration features a sax section to rival Duke Ellington's Hodges/Webster/Bigard/Carney nexus. (Here your lineup is: Dudu Pukwana, Barney Rachabane, Nick Moyake, "Christopher Columbus" Ngcukane, and the legendary Kippie Moeketsi.) Massive! ••• (2) Few conjuntos could swing as hard and happy as El Gran Combo. The title number on this 1965 set tells the tale of a baseball-playing horse. ••• (3) The recording division of Radio France produced, via its Ocora label, maybe the finest catalog of far-flung field recordings ever. One of the label's few LPs to cover Les États Unis features little-known street preacher Flora Molton accompanied in 1987 by stringbender Eleanor Ellis. ••• (4) Dr. K. Gyasi led several top highlife outfits in Ghana going back to the mid-'50s. His later band, the Noble Kings, which introduced the sikyi rhythm to the dancehalls of Accra, often featured guitarist Eric Agyeman and, on this highlife charmer, vocalist Thomas Frimpong. ••• (5) Ipanema, Rio's ritzy suburb, is home to the vast hillside slum Morro do Cantagalo. Cantagalo was home to the poet, songwriter and ex-drug dealer Adão Dãxalebarã, who, paralyzed by 14 police bullets, came to wider attention through a role in the film City of God. A year before hepatitis killed him in 2004, Adão released Escolástica ("Scholastic") his only record. ••• (6) Teutonic tunesmiths Ougenweide took the lyrics for their second album from the Merseburg Incantations, a set of medieval pagan spells written in the ancient Old High German. Surely not just the lyrics were high. Ich genießen!

I saw Flora Molton at the Clearwater Hudson River Festival in '86. She was on a side stage, playing to a small audience. She was quite old at the time but played well. After the show I bought a cassette from her that I still have - somewhere. It was $5.